CHIME’s mission is to mobilize community resources to promote and
provide music education for DC public schoolchildren, during and outside of
school. Our goals include getting
public support and funding to provide quality music education in the required
curriculum for all DC public schools, enriched and supported by community
resources. In addition to our advocacy, we have provided free instruction,
performances, instrument donations and teacher training that have reached
directly over 12,000 students and 250 teachers in over 50 schools in the 7
years our non-profit has been operating with no paid staff.

However,no matter how much support and enrichment
CHIME and all the other arts organizations that do outreach to the DC public
schools provide, they cannot substitute for a systematic music curriculum
available to all our students or compensate for the current unequal and
inadequate state of DC school music education.

Purpose of this testimony:

While DCPS has many needs included
in the Unfunded Educational Investments list, my testimony is limited to the
need for funding music education beyond the unpredictable amount it will
receive under the weighted student average formula in the basic budget. We know the importance you, as a trained
musician, give to music education, and hope you will be as strong an advocate
for enabling DC youth to benefit from it, as you have been for bringing
baseball to DC. You based your advocacy of public funding for baseball on its
contributions to economic development and civic pride. Developing skills in our
youth that prepare for good careers, as participation in music ensembles has
been shown to do, is arguably the most cost-effective form of economic
development. School bands and other ensembles, properly funded, could once again
be a major source of civic pride and national recognition.Our school bands used to win national awards,
as Ballou did for us this year. And as you did for baseball, we believe that
with your leadership the private sector could play a significant role in providing the
needed support to bring back our bands and give all our children the
opportunity to enrich their lives and fulfillment with music education.

The current state of music education in DCPS:

Under the weighted student average
system, maintained in the current proposed budget, whether or not music
education is offered in a school is up to the discretion of the Principal,
despite the fact that it is declared to be a core subject in the NCLB Act, and
by Superintendent Janey.

According to statistics provided by the DCPS Director of Music:

Out of 107 elementary schools and education centers:

1.Only 80 schools, serving 63% of our students,
have a music teacher. That doesn’t
mean, of course, that every child in these schools receives even one hour of music
instruction a week.

2.Distribution by Ward of students with a
music teacher varies from over 90% in Wards 2 and 3 to less than 40% in
Wards 6 and 7.

3.Out of the 80 schools with a music teacher,
only 18 (or 23%) have a band or string program—that is 17% of all schools,
with, of course, a much smaller % of student participation. This means that few of our inner city children
currently have access to instrumental instruction, which has been shown to be
so beneficial to academic achievement, character development and later career
success. Since an early start in music instruction is necessary to qualify for
a good musical career, we can only wonder at the loss of potential that is lost
through this lack of access by our inner-city children.

There are fewer schools offering music in 2004-5 than there were last
year, in a steadily deteriorating trend since music stopped being centrally
funded in 1992. There has been no DCPS money allocated to instrument
purchases since then. Even with help to some schools from programs such as VH1,
manyschools with instrumental programs
deplore the inadequacy and bad condition of the instruments they have to work
with.Our celebrated Shaw Jr. High
School Band has had no new uniforms since 1980—like the uniforms at most other
High Schools, second-hand uniforms are held together with safety pins and
glue.There
is no reason to believe that the situation will not become worse next year,
unless funding is provided for the music and art componentin the “Unfunded Educational Investments”
part of the proposed budget.

Reasons for providing additional funding for music education in the
2006 Budget

What is missing from most political
discussion about public education is what the goals of it should be: NCLB, by
stressing test scores measuring basic literacy and numeracy above all else,
focuses, in my opinion, on means rather than ends and woefully short-changes
our children. Of course our children should be expected to know how to read and
reason mathematically. But for what purposes? And is that all we want them to
know as they go out into our complex world? I suggest they should learn these
tools in order to:

·Become familiar with their cultural, historical
and scientific heritages.

·Learn to think critically.

·Understand public issues and become good
citizens.

·Realize their potential in future work and
leisure activities.

It is the intent of this testimony to demonstrate that music education
has benefits that promote academic performance and contribute to the
achievement of these goals, and therefore should be considered as part of a
core education, and funded accordingly.

Benefits from including and funding music in the core curriculum:

1. Learning to sing or play an instrument helps children in reading and
math.

The connection between music and
math learning is well known: no one can play music without having an
understanding of fractions, for example. Until modern times music and math were
considered to be two branches of the same subject. Inspired music teachers like
Mr. Hoover have told me how some of their almost illiterate students have been
motivated to learn to read music, and from there to improve their reading of
texts. There is a transference in the eye movements and other skills needed to
read music and to read texts, from the point of view of technique, and
developing an interest and sense of accomplishment in music can provide motivation
for academic effort, particularly if participation in the band is made
conditional on academic performance.

2. Participating in music ensembles promotes skills and character
traits that not only contribute to academic success but are needed to obtain
desirable jobs (not just in music), to be good parents and citizens, and to
enrich quality of life.These
include self-discipline, listening and paying attention, teamwork, persistence
andexpressive ability.

3. Achievement in learning to play an instrument (including voice)
provides an authentic sense of self-worth, especially for non-native
speakers of English and those with low academic achievement, that can lead to
developing belief in the ability to succeed in school, given the effort.

4. Musical ensembles provide a positive alternative to gangs and other
anti-social activities.

We can provide examples of students
who have been turned around by the opportunity to belong to a “positive gang”,
which is what a band could be considered to be—socially as well as
academically.

5. Development of performance skills provides employment opportunities
for students from gigs while still in school, as well as later.

6. School bands and other ensembles, when supported, are a source of
school, neighborhood and civic pride. The
achievements of the Ballou Band this year are an example of the national
recognition many of our school bands used to achieve. I hear that Ballou, which
last year graced our front pages with one disaster after another, is now
bursting with pride, and now everyone wants to be in the band.It used to be like “Drumline” here in DC,
where being in the band was at least as prestigious as being on the team. I
have attached documentation from Charles Hankerson,
the music teacher who built the national award-winning Woodson Band, trained
many students who later became musicians and music teachers, and organized
summer band camps for 10 years in DC and an All-City Band, about those former “glory days”, which we hope to bring
back. With this goal in mind, CHIME has formed a partnership with the AnacostiaMuseum and AmericanUniversity, for a project called Banding
Together-Then and Now, to document the role DCPS bands used to play in
creating school and neighborhood pride and fostering the personal and career
development of their participants. It will consist of oral histories, an
exhibition, a documentary and educational outreach events.

7. Exposure to many forms of music and different musical traditions not
only enriches students by introducing them to the best that human cultures,
including their own, have produced, but can show them the interdependence
between different cultures and traditions. Much history and geography can be
taught through tracing the way musical instruments and forms have been spread
through trade, migration, colonization and travel. Music is a means of
communication that transcends all social and linguistic boundaries, because it
speaks directly to our feelings.

8. Without arts education there will not be future patrons of the arts.
Who is going to support all those
new performing venues that have been constructed recently, with the help of
city funding,ifour new generations are never exposed to any
art forms except those in the commercial pop culture? We are already losing our
jazz and classical radio programs, and those patronizing our concert halls and
theaters are predominantly white and graying. What kind of country will this be
if our citizens lack contact with the best that humanity has produced, and are
ignorant of their own cultural achievements?

WE REQUEST YOU SUPPORT MUSIC EDUCATION NEEDS FOR DCPS BY:

1.Funding the
music education provision in the Unfunded Educational Investments and use your
influence to get music back in the core curriculum under central administration
so that is offered in all schools. Music, along with art and PE, should
actually be in the core curriculum, and not just on paper as another unfunded
mandate in NCLB. For this they need to be centrally funded, as they were before
1992, with sufficient funds to hire at least one music teacher for every
school, and preferably two, a vocal and an instrumental teacher. If every
school had a music teacher, music standards and an approved music curriculum,
the arts community could supplement and enrich the school program much more
effectively than it can do now.

2.Provide
funding for summer music programs during the summer school session:

CHIME testified before the City
Council on February 8 proposing $250,000 from the cash

reserves for 12 summer music camps
around the city to be run by DCPS during the 6-week summer school session in
2005 (a copy of this testimony is attached). We have been told the outlook is favorable that they will be included
in the Bill, or an amendment to it, that the Council will be voting on in
March, and I fervently urge you to support funding of this small item, that
could provide 1500 young people with 120 hours of intensive music training, at
a cost of less than $125 each (excluding stipends for them).

Beyond this special funding for a
2005 summer music program, I urge you to provide in the DCPS 2006 budget an
equivalent amount for Summer 2006.Summer music (and other arts) programs fill many needs and it would be
hard to find an investment with a higher benefit-cost ratio.

3.Enlist the support of the private sector,
under your leadership, in providing

instruments, instrument repair, instructional materials and uniforms to
support school music ensembles.

Some suggestions:

Matching grants: Provide an
incentive for business support for instruments and uniforms by offering to
match donations with city funds, either 1 to 1 or some other ratio. City
Departments often call on school ensembles to perform at public events.
The city should help support them in return.

Help establish a school band
“adoption” program, whereby businesses or

business associations would help with funding school needs. In return
the bands,

choruses or other ensembles could perform at their functions, or feature
in their PR.

Encourage businesses to provide pro
bono grant-writing assistance to

teachers in applying for foundation
grants, eg from Mr. Holland’s Opus, that
are

available for funding school instruments and other supplies. This could be facilitated by

your Office of Grants and Partnership
Development.

Provide tax incentivesfor music stores and companies to
donate instruments,

instrument repairs, and instructional materials.

Fund an apprenticeship or other
training program to train students to repair

instruments—DCPS is full of
instruments needing repair. This is actually a good

profession, as well as a skill that many performing
musicians would value having.

Thank you for your consideration of
these proposals.

I would be happy to provide any additional information that might help
you in deciding to support these proposals.